In a blog post earlier this this year we wrote about the difference between working "on" your business rather than "in" your business (Check it out: /working-on-not-in-your-business ). This can be a tough concept to adopt because the work has to get done....somebody has to do it...and nobody will do it better than you!
1. Shine up your reservation intake process?
When you enter reservations into a manual system that doesn't manage ALL the logistics of your operation you allow inefficiencies, create added steps to managing a reservation, not to mention increase the opportunity for mistakes.
2. Data entry. It stinks.
We find that many tour operators intake reservations into one system (Ie: excel, paper, crm, POS, white board, sticky note), then reenter the same information into another system (ie: QuickBooks, POS, terminal, constant contact). By using a reservation management system (RMS) like The Flybook your booking is entered completely into a system that in real time can schedule staff, reserve rooms, assign equipment, capture payment, notify guests, update calendars, sign waivers, store client information to database, update online reservation system etc. To make changes, update or access the reservation details you are just a few clicks away. Once that data has been entered it can be leveraged for continued marketing, and business analysis in other systems (if necessary).
3. Are you a professional cut and paste-er?
Some tour operators manually send confirmation information to their customers via email (and snail mail). Not only can this be time consuming and mistake prone. But, in the life of a reservation assuming there maybe date changes, location changes, additional payments etc you may need to repeat this process multiple times in order to update the client and the reservation. Most reservation systems take care of customer notifications automatically. Thus making frequent reservation adjustments simple and efficient.
4. Is playing phone, email and text tag with your staff fun?
For many tour operators scheduling and communicating with staff can be an elaborate phone and text tag game. The more time you spend wrangling your staff and employees the less time you (and they) are focused on your clients and their experience with your company. Your cloud based reservation system should provide your staff with the tools they need to know exactly when they are scheduled and what additional information is necessary to perform their job. Furthermore, your reservation system should make staff access a mobile experience available 24/7.